Let's hope that Freya doesn't have to wear a snowsuit over her Halloween costume at least. Yay for growing up in Michigan. :p

This made me smile!

We are probably going to take grey (dressed up) to the Halloween parade in town, lots of the stores participate and give out candy, and you can tour the fire station! Our block doesn't really do much for Halloween because we all have like 30 steps up to the front door.

The Emperor has been insisting that I need to dress up the Magician as a crocodile for Halloween. Maybe.

If I had to guess, I'd say odds are 50/50 that E will either be a firefighter or a pirate.

Last year and the year before I took E to the city's Halloween parade. He was so excited and distracted that I think he collected all of 3 pieces of candy and a spooky pencil. This year I am a little more wary because he knows what candy is now and yeah.

I'm considering taking just him out trick-or-treating on our block. I think he'd like the door to door and he'd end up with less candy that way.

A friend of mine was talking about doing the "Switch Witch" for nonvegan candy. Her kids leave their candy out on the step and in the morning, the Switch Witch brings them a toy or book that they wanted more. They do get some pieces of candy to keep and eat, but that gets rid of the bulk. She said it works really well - her son is 5 and puts in his request for books weeks in advance.

I want to do a vegan family party with friends. I'd like it to be bigger, but don't think our meet-up group will host it. The organizer doesn't like children and has no interest in doing family events, but loves Halloween so she wants to keep the date open until the very last minute in case she decides to do anything.

_________________My oven is bigger on the inside, and it produces lots of wibbly wobbly, cake wakey... stuff. - The PoopieB.

A Halloween parade! I'm not sure about costumes yet, though we had our eye on a Princess Leia one last year. One of my nanny girls lives in a neighborhood that does something for Halloween each year, and I think we're going to visit there with the Bean and nanny girl #2.

Ariann, do you have religious objections to Halloween? Just curious, as this is quite common in the town where my folks live. I do have one couple I know too, who just really don't like the whole emphasis on candy, so they skip it too. The occult/Celtic thing doesn't bother me a lick, but I do want to emphasize to my munchkins that Halloween (for me) is about more than candy.

I was allowed to celebrate it growing up, but my husband wasn't on religious grounds. We've decided to not celebrate it as a family (our family rule is that we celebrate our religious holidays and patriotic holidays, and don't celebrate holidays that clearly come from another religious tradition). We already have a dress-up-and-give-treats holiday which happens in the early spring, so it's no real loss.

A friend of mine was talking about doing the "Switch Witch" for nonvegan candy. Her kids leave their candy out on the step and in the morning, the Switch Witch brings them a toy or book that they wanted more.

Thank you for telling us about the "Switch Witch" I mentioned it to Peter and Reno today and she is now very excited to give ALL her Halloween candy away to the Switch Witch.

She thinks it's a real witch and has been asking the best questions about it all day today. :) I'll break it to her in a few days that it's not a real witch. (we let our kids know santa, easter bunny, tooth fairy..etc..aren't real)

As of right now Reno plans on being Princess Leia this Halloween and Frankie Stein from Monster High for next Halloween. She really wants Miles to be Yoda, which would be perfect because the way he walks around and goes through things is exactly like Yoda...BUT...he won't keep a hat of any kind on his head which means no Yoda ears. He might have to be a mini Luke Skywalker or Han Solo or something.

I grew up in a big suburban neighborhood with a lot of houses, which inevitably meant a lot of candy. What our family did was that after we collected all the candy, we were allowed to choose a certain amount to keep, and then we donated the rest to local hospitals, so children who couldn't go out trick-or-treating would get candy. I always felt really good about it, so it didn't bother me that I didn't get to keep most of the candy I collected because I knew it was going to a good cause.

_________________Man, fork the gender card, imma come at you with the whole damned gender deck. - Olives Did you ever think that, like, YOU are a sexy costume FOR a diva cup? - solipsistnationblog!FB!

I just remembered that some dentist in my area (attn: tofulish) will trade candy for prizes and sometimes money and then they send it all to the troops overseas. So maybe after we "Switch Witch" Reno's candy we will, without Reno, give it to a participating dentist!

Switch Witch is a cute idea! I usually just buy their favorite candy (like a candy bar) and then he doesn't care about the real stuff and I send it to my dad's office after a few days. It's more about the collecting the candy, than it is the eating, thankfully.

Silas wants to be a dinosaur and that works out nicely for us because I saved the adorable dino costume Shae wore when he was 3 and I'm pretty sure it'll fit Silas. Shae says he's too old for halloween, but Silas says he wants him to dress up anyway, so we'll see how that goes. Shae's excited for the local haunted houses and the huge haunted trail ride thingy.

I just remembered that some dentist in my area (attn: tofulish) will trade candy for prizes and sometimes money and then they send it all to the troops overseas. So maybe after we "Switch Witch" Reno's candy we will, without Reno, give it to a participating dentist!

This is awesome! We should tell the other vegan mamas!

_________________My oven is bigger on the inside, and it produces lots of wibbly wobbly, cake wakey... stuff. - The PoopieB.

We do a version of the Switch Witch- Malcolm goes trick or treating, he comes home, we sort out what he can't eat (it ends up being about 3/4), and he trades that stuff for a small present (last year it was new foam swords to play pirates with). The candy he can't eat goes back into the pass-out bowl, and I don't have to buy nearly as much candy. It's a win win!

The baby will be an elephant. It was a cute inexpensive costume I saw randomly at Costco. The older three are dressing up as spooky things. The two older girls both have parades at their respective schools, so I'm probably taking the day off work so that Mr. and I can go to both school parades and do both school parties. We'll be meeting friends at night to go trick-or-treating.

I really want to go out to an adult Halloween party, but don't know if I'll have the energy after all the kid-centered Halloween stuff.

BTW, I love the idea of the Switch Witch. My teen's orthodontist used to do a candy buy back. They paid $1 for 1 lb., if I remember correctly. I will probably try something similar with my kids because they're a little too old to start the Switch Witch tradition.

_________________Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule. Buddha

My mom brought Kai a fuzzy duck costume that she found somewhere for a few bucks. This got me the idea to do the "lemonade stand" song as a family. I want my husband to be the lemonade stand (decorated cardboard box on suspenders & carry a pitcher) and I'll be the grapes (balloons). If we do manage to get this together, I'm thinking we should march in a parade, maybe either in Pt. Pleasant or Lambertville the Sunday before Halloween. Only thing is, I'm not sure if people will recognize what we are. Have others heard this song? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmH2J9-50Gc

_________________I'm not asking for utopian dreams...just a little peace in this world. That's a logical thing. - Deee-Lite

Oh, the Switch Witch is an awesome idea!! I'd been wondering how to best celebrate Halloween. Sven is only 9 months so we're not going out with him, but a friend is having a baby Halloween party so we'll have someplace to go all dressed up. I haven't decided on a costume yet, though! My mom sent me the costume pattern from my first Halloween (green dinosaur) so I might use that.

we will be going to our old city for Halloween which is pretty much Halloween central. It will be cool to go as "tourists" and bring wolverine to see it all. Very excited! We have a cute dog costume a friend gave us. I might try and find a baby wolverine costume though.

My mom brought Kai a fuzzy duck costume that she found somewhere for a few bucks. This got me the idea to do the "lemonade stand" song as a family. I want my husband to be the lemonade stand (decorated cardboard box on suspenders & carry a pitcher) and I'll be the grapes (balloons). If we do manage to get this together, I'm thinking we should march in a parade, maybe either in Pt. Pleasant or Lambertville the Sunday before Halloween. Only thing is, I'm not sure if people will recognize what we are. Have others heard this song? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmH2J9-50Gc

That is adorable! My son loves that song. My family would totally recognize what you were!

I think we're going to do the Switch Witch too. Iz always gets SO much candy - we take him trick-or-treating, and then all of his relatives think they should give him a basket/bag/etc of candy too. Seriously, there is no way we could ever let him eat it all, even if we spread it out over weeks! I would definitely prefer him to have a few pieces and a new toy/new book/new science experiment/whatever.

_________________when you realise how perfect everything is, you will tilt you head back and laugh at the sky. -buddha

Iz is super excited for it, and he really wants to be Link from the Zelda games. I'm not really feeling up to creating the costume this year, so we're going to spend a little more than normal and buy him a nice one. (Hopefully Z will want to wear it in a few years so we can get a couple uses out of it!) This is it: http://www.nintendocostumes.com/child-e ... stume.html though we won't get the weird hair to go with.

Not sure about Z yet. I can't think of anything that would go well to match the Link costume, so I think we might do something entirely unrelated. Maybe Waldo. We tried (and failed) to do that last year. We'll probably do something free or cheap, since we're buying the other costume (and he's still too young to really care).

_________________when you realise how perfect everything is, you will tilt you head back and laugh at the sky. -buddha

Reno wants to be Black Widow from The Avengers. She wanted to be her last year but changed her mind when we went costume shopping. I have a feeling that might happen again this year. She's a bit upset I won't let her have a fake gun to complete the costume.

I think Miles will just wear his Melissa and Doug Fireman outfit he got for his birthday.

I think Inez wants to be Ladybug Girl (from the books), which sounds good to me because it's a super easy costume to put together. We missed Halloween last year because we were traveling and I'm really looking forward to it this year. But I'm due the 29th, so we'll see.

aw Pinko, D used to love those Ladybug Girl books! I think she wants to be a fairy. That should be easy enough, right? Especially because she already has some nice wings and several tutus...just needs a wand maybe. The nice thing is that this year she'll actually have somewhere to go, because it's a school day and they all get to go in their costumes. (Last year we were stranded in California due to the hurricane here.)as for Sierra, I bought some ridiculously cute cow suit before she was even born and I think it would actually fit her now, but of course I can't find it anywhere. Hmmph.